Oil Painting Reproduction of Klimt- Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 5 from 56 OIL PAINTING: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, 1907 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is a painting by Gustav Klimt completed in 1907. According to press reports it was sold for US$135 million to Ronald Lauder for his Neue Galerie in New York City in June 2006 which would make it the most expensive painting ever sold. It has been on display at the gallery since July 2006. Klimt took three years to complete the painting. It measures 138 x 138 cm and is made of oil and gold on canvas, showing elaborate and complex ornamentation as seen in the Jugendstil style. Klimt was a member of the Vienna Secession, a group of artists that broke away from the traditional way of painting. The painting was judged to be pivotal and revolutionary, akin to Picasso�s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of the same year. The picture was painted in Vienna and commissioned by Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer.

As a wealthy industrialist who had made his fortune in the sugar industry, he sponsored the arts and favored and supported Gustav Klimt. His wife Adele Bloch-Bauer became the only model who was painted twice by Klimt when he completed a second oil painting of her, Adele Bloch-Bauer II, in 1912. Browse Artists Alphabetically by Name Gustav Klimt An Austrian Symbolist Painter - Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I - Sold for $135 million - YouTube Gustav Klimt An Austrian Symbolist Painter - Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I - Sold for $135 million Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Apr 17, 2013 Gustav Klimt An Austrian Symbolist Painter - Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I - Sold for $135 million Authentic Hand Painted Canvas Art (Famous Masterpieces) Free Shipping and Free Returns....

Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 -- February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body; his works are marked by a frank eroticism. Klimt became one of the founding members and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) in 1897 and of the group's periodical, Ver Sacrum ("Sacred Spring"). He remained with the Secession until 1908. The goals of the group were to provide exhibitions for unconventional young artists, to bring the works of the best foreign artists to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine to showcase the work of members. The group declared no manifesto and did not set out to encourage any particular style—Naturalists, Realists, and Symbolists all coexisted. The government supported their efforts and gave them a lease on public land to erect an exhibition hall.

The group's symbol was Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of just causes, wisdom, and the arts—of whom Klimt painted his radical version in 1898. In 1911 his painting Death and Life received first prize in the world exhibitions in Rome. In 1915 Anna, his mother, died. Klimt died three years later in Vienna on February 6, 1918, having suffered a stroke and pneumonia due to the influenza epidemic of that year. He was buried at the Hietzinger Cemetery in Hietzing, Vienna. Numerous paintings by him were left unfinished. Klimt's paintings have brought some of the highest prices recorded for individual works of art. In November 2003, Klimt's Landhaus am Attersee sold for $29,128,000, but that sale was soon eclipsed by prices paid for other Klimts.

In 2006, the 1907 portrait, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, was purchased for the Neue Galerie New York by Ronald Lauder reportedly for US $135 million, surpassing Picasso's 1905 Boy With a Pipe (sold May 5, 2004 for $104 million), as the highest reported price ever paid for a painting.

Gustav Klimt's Paintings Klimt University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings Palais Stoclet mosaic in Brussels Fable (1883) The Theatre in Taormina (1886--1888), Burgtheater, Vienna Auditorium in the Old Burgtheater, Vienna (1888) Portrait of Joseph Pembauer, the Pianist and Piano Teacher (1890) Ancient Greece II (Girl from Tanagra) (1890--91) Portrait of a Lady (Frau Heymann?) (1894) Music I (1895) Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) Poppy Field (1907) Schloss Kammer (de) on the Attersee I (1908) The Kiss (1907--08) Lady with Hat and Feather Boa (1909) The Tree of Life (1909) Judith II (Salomé) (1909) Black Feather Hat (Lady with Feather Hat) (1910) Schloss Kammer on the Attersee III (1910) The Park

 (1910) Cottage Garden with Crucifix (destroyed) (1911--12) Apple Tree (1912) Forester's House, Weissenbach on Lake Attersee (1912) Portrait of Mäda Gertrude Primavesi (1912) Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912) The Virgins (Die Jungfrau) (1913) Semi-nude seated, reclining (1913) Semi-nude seated, with closed eyes (1913) Portrait of Eugenia Primavesi (1913--14) Lovers, drawn from the right (1914) Portrait of Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt (1914) Semi-nude lying, drawn from the right (1914--15) Portrait of Friederike Maria Beer (1916) Houses in Unterach on the Attersee (1916) Death and Life (1916) Garden Path with Chickens (destroyed)(1916) The Girl-Friends (destroyed) (1916--17) Woman

 seated with thighs apart, drawing (1916--17) The Dancer (1916--18) Portrait painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt Portrait painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt, LeadArt oil painting do reproduction of it in museum quality on linen canvas: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, c.

1907, oil and golden and silver foil on canvas, 138 × 138 cm (54.33 × 54.33 in) Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is a painting by Gustav Klimt completed in 1907. According to press reports it was sold for US$135 million to Ronald Lauder for his Neue Galerie in New York City in June 2006, which made it at that time the most expensive painting ever sold. It has been on display at the gallery since July 2006. If you have any comment about this portrait painting, welcome to send us by email: leadartportrait@gmail.com , and we will add them here.

Your are here Bildnis der Adele Bloch-Bauer I 1907, Adele Bloch-Bauer I Portrait Painting by Gustav Klimt | Bildnis der Adele Bloch-Bauer I 1907 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I Measures: 138 x 138 cm Technique: Oil on canvas Depository: Neue Galerie New York Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is a 1907 painting by Gustav Klimt. According to press reports it was sold for US$135 million to Ronald Lauder for his Neue Galerie in New York City in June 2006, which made it at that time the List of most expensive paintings|most expensive painting for about 4 months. ...

read more » Lauder Pays $135 Million, a Record, for a Klimt Portrait - The New York Times The New York Times Art & Design |Lauder Pays $135 Million, a Record, for a Klimt Portrait Search Continue reading the main story A dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by the cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting. The portrait, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist and the hostess of a prominent Vienna salon, is considered one of the artist's masterpieces. For years, it was the focus of a restitution battle between the Austrian government and a niece of Mrs. Bloch-Bauer who argued that it was seized along with four other Klimt paintings by the Nazis during World War II. In January all five paintings were awarded to the niece, Maria Altmann, now 90, who lives in Los Angeles, and other family members. Although confidentiality agreements surrounding the sale forbid Mr.

Lauder to disclose the price, experts familiar with the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he paid $135 million for the work. In a telephone interview Mr. Lauder did not deny that he had paid a record amount for the painting, eclipsing the $104.1 million paid for Picasso's 1905 "Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)" in an auction at Sotheby's in 2004. "This is our Mona Lisa," said Mr. Lauder, a founder of the five-year-old Neue Galerie, a tiny museum at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street devoted entirely to German and Austrian fine and decorative arts. "It is a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition." He said Christie's had helped him negotiate the purchase. Continue reading the main story For most of the last 60 years the portrait has hung in the Austrian Gallery in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna near "The Kiss," another gold-flecked Klimt masterpiece of the Art Nouveau era. With its sinuous lines and intricate details, the painting, "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," was commissioned by the subject's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. Mrs.

Bloch-Bauer died of meningitis in 1925 at 43. In her will she requested that the painting and four others by Klimt that the couple owned be left to Austria upon her husband's death. But when Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, Mr. Bloch-Bauer fled, leaving all of his possessions behind. The Nazi government confiscated his property, placed three of the paintings in the Austrian Gallery and sold the rest. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Before Mr. Bloch-Bauer died, in November 1945, having spent the war years in Switzerland, he revoked all previous wills and drafted a new one. Since he and Adele had no children, he left his entire estate to three children of his brother Gustav: Robert, Luise and Maria. Of the three, only Maria Altmann is still living: she and her husband, Fritz, fled Austria during the war and settled in Los Angeles in 1942. She has a niece and two nephews; a cousin of her brother's second wife also survives. In a telephone interview on Friday Mrs. Altmann said she had met Mr.

Lauder, a former American ambassador to Austria, some years ago and that she had visited the Neue Galerie when it first opened in November 2001. "Mr. Lauder has a great understanding of Austria and a great love for Klimt," she said, adding that neither she nor her relatives felt it was practical for any of them to keep the painting, which depicts her aunt, whom she remembers from her childhood but who died when she was just 9. That Mrs. Altmann and her relatives have possession of the painting is a tale of perseverance and tenacity. After the war the family tried to regain their stolen possessions, including the paintings, porcelains, palaces and the sugar company founded by Mr. Bloch-Bauer. Much of the artwork was divided up among the top Nazis, including Hitler and Hermann Göring; Reinhardt Hedrick, a Nazi commander, occupied a summer palace owned by Mr. Bloch-Bauer outside Prague. The heirs were able to recover some of the works, but the Austrian authorities ruled that Mrs. Bloch-Bauer's will had essentially bequeathed the Klimts to Austria. Without access to the original documents, the family had no case.

By the mid-1980's journalists had begun investigating the restitution claim, and in 1998 Hubertus Czernin, a Viennese journalist researching the case for The Boston Globe, was able to find the documents, including Mrs. Bloch-Bauer's will, which expressed a wish — but did not require — that the Klimts go to Austria. Photo A detail from Gustav Klimt's 1907 portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer I." Credit Museum Associates/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images In 2000 Mrs. Altmann and the other heirs sued the Austrian government in the United States. Austria went to court to seek a dismissal of the suit, and the case wended its way to the United States Supreme Court, which in June 2004 ruled that Mrs. Altmann could sue Austria in the United States. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In January an arbitration tribunal in Austria decided in favor of Mrs. Altmann and her fellow heirs, awarding them the five paintings.

In addition to "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" they include a second portrait of Adele, from 1911, and three landscapes: "Beechwood" (1903), "Apple Tree I" (circa 1911) and "Houses in Unterach on Lake Atter" (1916). After the settlement, Steven Thomas, the lawyer representing the Bloch-Baur heirs, said he had been approached by museums and collectors around the world who were interested in buying one or more of the paintings. Mrs. Altmann said he had felt especially receptive to Mr. Lauder because throughout all the years the family was struggling to reclaim the art, he consistently kept in touch with her, offering to help in any way he could. "He was incredibly generous and constantly supportive," she said. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy In April Mrs. Altmann and her heirs lent the paintings to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where they remain on view through June 30.

Then the five works will travel to the Neue Galerie, where "Gustav Klimt: Five Paintings From the Collection of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer" will be on view from July 13 through Sept. 18. Mrs. Altmann said that when the gold portrait of her aunt finally hangs in the Neue Galerie, she will feel that it is finally where it belongs. The painting, which took Klimt three years to create, shows her aunt regally posed, with a mysterious gaze, sensuous red lips and her hands twisted near her face to conceal a deformed finger. He used gold throughout the richly painted background and in the glistening fabric of Adele's patterned gown. Art historians and chroniclers of Vienna society in the early 20th century have suggested that the artist and Ms. Bloch-Bauer were lovers. "I never saw her smile," Mrs. Altmann recalled in Friday in the interview. "She was always very serious and wore flowing white dresses and carried a gold cigarette holder when it was very unusual for women to smoke. She would have loved to have been a woman of today, to go to university and to get involved in government." Mrs.

Bloch-Bauer was known for giving frequent parties and surrounding herself with many of the great artists, politicians and intellectuals of the day, among them the composer Richard Strauss. "She didn't have teas for ladies like my mother," Ms. Altmann said. That wasn't down her alley." She said although Adele was very close to Mrs. Altmann's mother, Therese, she also seemed to resent her at times because Therese had a house full of healthy children and Adele had endured three tragic births. (One child died three days after it was born, and two others died within hours.) She remembers asking her mother about the rumored love affair between Klimt and her aunt. "My mother got mad and said, 'How dare you ask such a thing? It was an intellectual friendship,' " she recalled. "But I think it was very possible there was a romance." Of Klimt, who died in 1918, when Ms. Altmann was just a toddler, she remembers hearing that he often wore a floor-length smock with nothing underneath. Advertisement Continue reading the main story After Adele died, seven years after Klimt, her husband created a kind of shrine to her in what had been their bedroom.

"The Klimts were always in the bedroom, but after she died, the bed was removed and there were always fresh flowers," Mrs. Altmann said. As for the other four paintings, experts estimate that they are together worth some $100 million. The fate of these four has yet to be determined. "I can't decide," Mrs. Altmann said. "Maybe after they leave the Neue Galerie, they will go to Christie's. I very much hope they end up in museums. But for now I am just happy they have a home at the Neue Galerie. It is very deserved. I couldn't have wished for a better place." Correction: June 27, 2006 An article in The Arts on June 19 about the purchase of "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," a portrait by Gustav Klimt, for the Neue Galerie by Ronald S. Lauder misstated the context in which an Austrian journalist uncovered crucial documents about the work in 1998. The journalist, Hubertus Czernin, was conducting independent research in Austria when he found a will by Ms.

Bloch-Bauer mentioning the portrait; he was not researching the case for The Boston Globe. (Austria turned over the painting this year to a niece of Ms. Bloch-Bauer, Maria Altmann of Los Angeles, who sold it to Mr. Lauder.) A version of this article appears in print on , on Page E7 of the New York edition with the headline: Lauder Pays $135 Million, a Record, for a Klimt Portrait. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Gustav Klimt's Adele Bloch-Bauer Paintings Reunited | artnet News By Eileen Kinsella , Apr 2, 2015 The more famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907), nicknamed Woman in Gold for its dazzling use of lustrous gold embellishments, is a prime example of the artist’s “Golden Style.” It was the subject of the film of the same name starring Helen Mirren as Block-Bauer’s niece Maria Altmann and Ryan Reynolds as her lawyer in her fight to reclaim her aunt’s paintings. Gustav Klimt, Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912).

Courtesy Jonathan Muzikar. After eight years, Altmann successfully won her legal battle with the Austrian government, and she and her family were granted ownership of the five Klimts. Bloch-Bauer was the only subject the artist ever painted twice in full length. Following their victory, the family sold the works, and the Neue Galerie snapped up first Bloch-Bauer canvas at auction for $135 million in 2006, then a record sum. The other four paintings went to private buyers. Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–16). Courtesy of the Neue Galerie. Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912), a more conventional work in jewel tones, surfaced at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in September 2014, as part of a long-term loan. In the upcoming exhibition, the two works will be shown alongside 12 paintings, 40 drawings, and 40 works of decorative art, as well as vintage photographs of Klimt.

The museum has also commissioned Shanghai-based artist and designer Han Feng to create three one-of-a-kind outfits based on the designs of Viennese fashion designer Emilie Flöge, who was responsible for the clothes worn by many of Klimt’s subjects, including Bloch-Bauer in the iconic “Woman in Gold” painting. Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Mäda Primavesi (1912). Courtesy of the Neue Galerie and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While the two Bloch-Bauer works will be a highlight of the exhibition, she will share the stage with several other ladies who starred in Klimt’s major society portraits, including Gertha Loew (1902) and Mäda Primavesi (1912), as well as Szerena Lederer (1899) and her daughter Elisabeth Lederer (1914–16). Along with the the unfinished Portrait of Ria Munk III (1917), these works will demonstrate the evolution of Klimt’s portrait style throughout his career, showing his range from Symbolism and Pre-Raphaelite-inspired works to Fauvist-style depictions.

“Klimt and the Women of Vienna’s Golden Age, 1900–1918” will be on view at the Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue, September 22, 2016–January 16, 2017. The Woman in Gold | Christie's Corporate Social Responsibility The Woman in Gold Tom Teodorczuk on the remarkable restitution story behind one of Gustav Klimt's most iconic works, now the subject of a major Hollywood movie The mesmerising radiance of Adele Bloch-Bauer’s gaze in Gustav Klimt’s gold-flecked 1907 portrait of her provides no hint of the turbulent fate that lay in store for the painting. Commissioned by her sugar-industrialist husband Ferdinand, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I took Klimt three years to create, and was completed amid speculation that the Austrian artist and his high-society subject were lovers. Following Adele’s death in 1925 from meningitis, the masterpiece remained in the Bloch-Bauers’ Vienna townhouse until the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938.

Targeted amid the Nazis’ cultural looting spree, it was one of five Klimt paintings taken from the Bloch-Bauer residence, with the pictures ending up in Vienna’s Belvedere Gallery. Ferdinand died in exile in Switzerland in 1945. The Nazis also stole an engagement ring belonging to Maria Altmann, Adele’s niece. Altmann escaped from Austria, making her way to Los Angeles with her husband, where she opened a dress boutique. When the Austrian government passed a restitution law in 1998, ruling that property stolen by the Nazis could be returned to its rightful owners, Maria Altmann — now in her 80s — began a legal battle to regain the Klimts that belonged to her family, which included a second portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. She partnered with inexperienced lawyer Randol Schoenberg — grandson of her aunt’s composer friend Arnold Schoenberg — for what became a protracted battle for justice against the Austrian authorities, the latter erroneously arguing that they legally owned the pictures.

Video: The trailer for Woman in Gold Altmann needed to obtain proof that Adele’s stated wish to leave the paintings to the Belvedere Museum was superseded by the will of Ferdinand (the legal owner), who named his nieces as heirs, and secure a ruling from the United States Supreme Court, permitting her to sue Austria in an American court. An arbitration panel in Vienna would ultimately award Altmann ownership of the paintings. In June 2006 cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder purchased Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I for $135 million — then the highest price ever paid for a painting — for display in Manhattan’s Neue Galerie, a sale brokered by Christie’s. The other Klimts were sold at a Christie’s sale of Impressionist and Modern Art later that year. In 2007 filmmaker Simon Curtis happened to see a BBC documentary about Altmann, Stealing Klimt, and unsurprisingly thought the remarkable tale was tailor-made for Hollywood. His resulting movie is Woman in Gold, starring Dame Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann and Ryan Reynolds as her lawyer, Schoenberg.

The film switches between Adele Bloch-Bauer in turn-of-the-century Vienna, the upheaval suffered by the family in the wake of the Nazi occupation of Austria, and Maria’s legal crusade towards the end of her life (she died in 2011). ‘It’s a courtroom drama, an escape thriller and an odd-couple film,’ comments Curtis. A courtroom scene from Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann, the niece of Klimt’s muse, and Ryan Reynolds as E Randol ‘Randy' Schoenberg, her lawyer. Photograph by Robert Viglasky The one constant is Klimt’s portrait itself. ‘It’s a witness to the themes of the film,’ Curtis says. ‘It’s the Mona Lisa of Austria, but it’s also symbolic of the golden years of Vienna. This happens to be a masterpiece that you can find on jam jars, slippers and T-shirts, but nothing about the reproductions prepares you for its magnificence when you first see it.’ According to Curtis, Woman in Gold is not merely the narrative of a painting, but a portrait of a century. ‘It’s one of the great stories of the 20th century,’ he notes.

‘Maria was born during that remarkable time in Vienna when it had become the crucible for all the great ideas of the 20th century. Art, music, science and psychology were merging together. Then there was this extraordinary chain of events, and at the conclusion of the century both Maria and the painting ended up in the United States.’ Woman in Gold wears its heart, as well as its art, on its sleeve. ‘It’s about an emotional connection with the paintings because they were on the wall of this family home that has been destroyed,’ Curtis says. The fact that Mirren and Curtis themselves descend from families that fled wartime Eastern Europe during the 20th century enhanced their affinity with Altmann, although they never met her. ‘We talked to Randi a lot but, probably even better, we watched hours and hours of Maria’s interviews, which gave Helen and I a real sense of who she was,’ says Curtis.

Mirren said recently: ‘Through the material I had the great pleasure of getting to know Maria Altmann, who was such a remarkable, wonderful, funny, sexy, witty, humane and great woman.’ Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907. Oil, silver, and gold on canvas. © 2015. Neue Galerie New York/Art Resource/Scala, Florence Stephen Lash, Chairman Emeritus of Christie's Americas, did know Maria Altmann very well, originally through his interest in restitution cases. ‘Maria was one of the most memorable people I’ve ever met,’ he says. ‘She’s the kind of person you would walk into a restaurant with and the maître d' would stand and talk to her. If you got into a cab with her, you did so at your peril because the cab driver wouldn’t be watching the traffic. He would be turning around and talking to this charming woman in the back.’ Lash had a ringside seat as Altmann fought her legal battle against the Austrian government to reclaim her family’s property.

‘What I remember was her total lack of self-interest and total lack of greed,’ he says, adding that her motivations were as pure as the film portrays. ‘I have no doubt it was righting a wrong,’ he answers when asked what drove Maria to go to the lengths she did to achieve recompense. ‘She did it in the most elegant and correct, gentle but powerful way.’ Altmann was incredibly loyal as well as tenacious, he adds, citing both her decision to retain Schoenberg, thereby ignoring advice to hire a more experienced lawyer, and her choosing Christie’s to sell the Klimts once she was awarded the paintings. ‘Her lawyers kept saying to her, “We’ve got to make this competitive between the auction houses and you’ve got to get the best possible deal.” Maria said, “You can do whatever you want but I’m going with Lash!”.’ The Austrian authorities underestimated their octogenarian opponent. ‘I remember Maria telling me she went to Vienna and met with one of the ministries, and she was willing to do a deal with them on the basis that they got the portraits and that the family got back the landscapes,’ Lash recalls.

‘She would have settled on that basis and they would have got the gold portrait, but they said, “Nothing doing”. That’s when she pursued the case.’ Adele Bloch-Bauer wearing a dress from the ‘Wiener Werkstaette’, around 1910. Photo: akg-images/ullstein bild With the help of the late investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin, played in the film by Daniel Brühl, Maria proved that Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer had named his nieces as heirs. At times, said Lash, the fight was farcical. ‘I had a good time watching the expressions of the judges during the Supreme Court case, particularly Judge [Clarence] Thomas who dozed off for a good part of the hearing. I kept a record based on their facial expressions of who would be voting which way, and I wasn’t far wrong.’ Austria vs. Altmann was a landmark case for restitution according to Monica Dugot, International Director of Restitution at Christie’s. ‘It was at a time when, while there were a number of restitution claims pending, there hadn’t been such a major victory,’ she explains.

‘Many claimants had tried to recover their cultural heritage and given up because of the obstacles in their way. Whenever a family sees a huge success like this it inspires other families to have the courage to think, “Let's go for it and try to recover our family property and heritage”.’ Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds and the famous work by Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907. Photograph by Robert Viglasky Once Maria Altmann had reclaimed her property Lash introduced her to Ronald Lauder, who bought Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I for the Neue Galerie, where it presently spearheads an exhibition to coincide with the film. ‘We knew that it would become the most expensive picture ever sold,’ says Lash. ‘But it was a high risk to put it at auction because at that time there were no similar Klimts that had ever approached anything more than $5 million.

So it made sense for us to sell the most valuable piece at $130 million on a private basis, and with that comparable established in the market, to offer the other four pieces at auction.’ Altmann’s four Klimt paintings were sold at a record-breaking Christie’s sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in November 2006. ‘It was one of the most extraordinary sales I was ever involved in,’ recalls the evening’s auctioneer, Christopher Burge. ‘The highlight was the Klimts, which far and away exceeded anything we thought they were going to bring.’ For Lash the sale reinforced the notion that, ‘The auction world is a business based on relationships, not transactions.’ Prior to joining Christie’s he was a Vice-President at S.G. Warburg & Co, and paraphrasing Siegmund Warburg’s dictum on bankers, he says, ‘You can’t be someone’s auctioneer until you’re their friend. Maria Altmann was my friend.’ The fight for restitution will go on long after Woman in Gold has left cinemas.

‘Although many families have been looking for their property for more than 65 years, the evolution and the infrastructure of the field has made it much more possible to locate and restitute objects than in the past,’ said Monica Dugot. ‘With greater access and availability of resources, heirs are coming forward as there are still hundreds of thousands of works still missing. The story is far from over.’ 15 June 2016 Lauder Pays $135 Million, a Record, for a Klimt Portrait - NYTimes.com Lauder Pays $135 Million, a Record, for a Klimt Portrait By CAROL VOGEL Published: June 19, 2006 CORRECTION APPENDED A dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by the cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting. The portrait, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist and the hostess of a prominent Vienna salon, is considered one of the artist's masterpieces.

For years, it was the focus of a restitution battle between the Austrian government and a niece of Mrs. Bloch-Bauer who argued that it was seized along with four other Klimt paintings by the Nazis during World War II. In January all five paintings were awarded to the niece, Maria Altmann, now 90, who lives in Los Angeles, and other family members. Although confidentiality agreements surrounding the sale forbid Mr. Lauder to disclose the price, experts familiar with the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he paid $135 million for the work. In a telephone interview Mr. Lauder did not deny that he had paid a record amount for the painting, eclipsing the $104.1 million paid for Picasso's 1905 ''Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)'' in an auction at Sotheby's in 2004. ''This is our Mona Lisa,'' said Mr. Lauder, a founder of the five-year-old Neue Galerie, a tiny museum at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street devoted entirely to German and Austrian fine and decorative arts.

''It is a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition.'' He said Christie's had helped him negotiate the purchase. For most of the last 60 years the portrait has hung in the Austrian Gallery in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna near ''The Kiss,'' another gold-flecked Klimt masterpiece of the Art Nouveau era. With its sinuous lines and intricate details, the painting, ''Adele Bloch-Bauer I,'' was commissioned by the subject's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. Mrs. Bloch-Bauer died of meningitis in 1925 at 43. In her will she requested that the painting and four others by Klimt that the couple owned be left to Austria upon her husband's death. But when Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, Mr. Bloch-Bauer fled, leaving all of his possessions behind. The Nazi government confiscated his property, placed three of the paintings in the Austrian Gallery and sold the rest. Before Mr. Bloch-Bauer died, in November 1945, having spent the war years in Switzerland, he revoked all previous wills and drafted a new one.

Since he and Adele had no children, he left his entire estate to three children of his brother Gustav: Robert, Luise and Maria. Of the three, only Maria Altmann is still living: she and her husband, Fritz, fled Austria during the war and settled in Los Angeles in 1942. She has a niece and two nephews; a cousin of her brother's second wife also survives. In a telephone interview on Friday Mrs. Altmann said she had met Mr. Lauder, a former American ambassador to Austria, some years ago and that she had visited the Neue Galerie when it first opened in November 2001. ''Mr. Lauder has a great understanding of Austria and a great love for Klimt,'' she said, adding that neither she nor her relatives felt it was practical for any of them to keep the painting, which depicts her aunt, whom she remembers from her childhood but who died when she was just 9. That Mrs. Altmann and her relatives have possession of the painting is a tale of perseverance and tenacity.

After the war the family tried to regain their stolen possessions, including the paintings, porcelains, palaces and the sugar company founded by Mr. Bloch-Bauer. Much of the artwork was divided up among the top Nazis, including Hitler and Hermann G?g; Reinhardt Hedrick, a Nazi commander, occupied a summer palace owned by Mr. Bloch-Bauer outside Prague. The heirs were able to recover some of the works, but the Austrian authorities ruled that Mrs. Bloch-Bauer's will had essentially bequeathed the Klimts to Austria. Without access to the original documents, the family had no case. By the mid-1980's journalists had begun investigating the restitution claim, and in 1998 Hubertus Czernin, a Viennese journalist researching the case for The Boston Globe, was able to find the documents, including Mrs. Bloch-Bauer's will, which expressed a wish -- but did not require -- that the Klimts go to Austria. In 2000 Mrs. Altmann and the other heirs sued the Austrian government in the United States.

Austria went to court to seek a dismissal of the suit, and the case wended its way to the United States Supreme Court, which in June 2004 ruled that Mrs. Altmann could sue Austria in the United States. In January an arbitration tribunal in Austria decided in favor of Mrs. Altmann and her fellow heirs, awarding them the five paintings. In addition to ''Adele Bloch-Bauer I'' they include a second portrait of Adele, from 1911, and three landscapes: ''Beechwood'' (1903), ''Apple Tree I'' (circa 1911) and ''Houses in Utterach on Lake Atter'' (1916). After the settlement, Steven Thomas, the lawyer representing the Bloch-Baur heirs, said he had been approached by museums and collectors around the world who were interested in buying one or more of the paintings. 1 Gustav Klimt's $100 Million portrait - artnet News Gustav Klimt, Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) ©Neue Galerie New York.

Nine years ago, when cosmetics magnate and top collector Ronald Lauder, co-founder of the Neue Galerie, shelled out a reported $135 million for Gustav Klimt ‘s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), many in the art world were stunned (see Why Ronald Lauder is Right About Nazi-Looted Art in Museums ). At that point, only one work had ever sold for more than $100 million at auction—according to public records—and that was Picasso’s undeniable Rose-period masterpiece Boy With a Pipe (1905) sold at Sotheby’s New York in May 2004. No one cast any doubt on that landmark price. Not only was Picasso considered one of the best artists in the world—if not the best—that particular masterpiece also came with a sterling provenance. It had been tucked away in the blue chip collection of John Hay and Betsy Whitney for decades. The Whitneys had acquired the work for $30,000 in 1950.

Prior to that, the highest price for a work at auction was $82.5 million, paid in 1990 by a Japanese collector for Vincent Van Gogh ‘s 1890 Portrait of Dr. Gachet at the then-peaking art market (see 10 Game Changing Auctions and Do Riches Await In The Van Gogh Market?). How, market observers and art experts wondered aloud, had it been possible for Klimt—the Austrian Secessionist whose particular style was not exactly everyone’s cup of tea—managed to vault to four times more than his previous record of $29.3 million and far outstrip both of the records for heavyweights like Picasso and Van Gogh. In a New Yorker column in July 2006, critic Peter Schjeldahl said: “Is she worth the money? Not yet. Lauder’s outlay predicts a level of cost that must either soon become common or be relegated in history as a bid too far. And the identity of the artist gives pause….

Until a few years ago, the artist ranked as a second-tier modern master.” In a phone interview with the late Robert Rosenblum at the time, he told me that looking at Klimt, whose work he personally liked, was “like going to a Viennese bakery.” Klimt’s Portrait of Adele I was one of five paintings restituted to the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy sugar magnate whose wife Adele was the subject of the portrait. Nazis stole the works off the Bloch-Bauers’ walls in 1938 after Germany annexed Austria. Bloch-Bauer eventually fled the country. And the Belvedere Gallery eventually came to hold the works, citing a 1923 will by Adele (who died in 1925) that she had bequeathed the paintings to the institution (see Weinstein’s Nazi-Looted Klimt Restitution Film to Star Helen Mirren ). Maria Altmann, one of Bloch-Bauer’s heirs, fought for the return of the paintings for eight years and was ultimately successful in her efforts. She died in Los Angeles at age 94, in 2011.

The story is now the subject of a major Hollywood film, Woman in Gold, that opened April 1 and stars Helen Mirren as Altmann and Ryan Reynolds as her lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg. The Neue Galerie has just opened an exhibit devoted to the history of the painting, timed to coincide with the movie, including archival material, sketches, jewelry, and other Klimt paintings (see Gustav Klimt’s Real Woman in Gold Goes on View at the Neue Galerie ). In 2006, I interviewed Lauder and others about the acquisition and reported on the process for a story that appeared in ARTnews magazine in 2007. Lauder talked about his particular passion for the work of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele . Of the price for Adele I, Lauder told me in a phone interview “I didn’t even think of that. I knew there was nobody who wanted the painting more than me.” He called Adele I, “a once in a lifetime opportunity,” and has described it as the Neue Galerie’s Mona Lisa. Lauder said he first saw Klimt’s at age 14 on a trip to Austria.

After traveling with his family in France, he said he went on his own specifically to see the Klimt paintings that were hanging in the Belvedere. He described it as “like finding the Holy Grail. I was actually blown away by it. I had never seen such powerful images as The Kiss and Adele I.” At a time when the art world seemed obsessed with Claude Monet and French Impressionism, Lauder said there was “an excitement of discovery,” about Schiele and Klimt, because no one else he knew seemed to know about them. Some market observers said it was wrong to view the $135 million price as a battle of sorts between Klimt and Picasso. They said that the legendary backstory of the Adele portrait put the work on another plane altogether. Members of the $100 Million Club Gustav Klimt biography and paintings in high definition Golden Apple Tree 1903 Gustav Klimt Gustav Klimt was born 150 years ago, on 14th July 1862, into a lower-middle-class family in the Viennese suburb of Baumgarten as the second of seven children.

His childhood and youth coincided with the zenith of the Gründerzeit, the period in nineteenth-century Germany and Austria marked by economic prosperity and large-scale construction. The great Ringstrasse project of monumental building was just entering its final phase. Despite their difficult financial situation, the Klimts enjoyed a harmonious family life, and the siblings remained close throughout their lifetimes. Gustav Klimt With much sacrifice on the part of the family, the talented young Gustav was sent to Vienna's School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule), which later became the University of Applied Arts. He soon found himself in the midst of a group of artists who were working on the decoration of the new Ringstrasse buildings. At the beginning of the 1880s he, along with his brother Ernst and Franz Matsch, founded the Künstler-Compagnie, and over the next ten years they received commissions to create murals and ceiling paintings in numerous buildings in Vienna and throughout the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the death of Ernst Klimt in 1892, this "Company of Artists" disintegrated.

But artistically Gustav Klimt had already outgrown the historicist style of interior decoration. In turn-of-the-century Vienna, where Sigmund Freud was publishing his epoch-making works, art too was searching for new directions. Under the influence of Symbolism, Klimt was searching for a new formal language that would enable him to depict the landscapes of the soul characterized by dark emotions and hopeful fantasy images. The Vienna Secession In 1897 Klimt was catapulted into the public eye, becoming a founding member and the first president of the Vienna Secession, a group of artists striving for a renewal of art. The Secession, on the city's Karlsplatz, became the exhibition space for the new movement. It was the period of the most prominent scandals that the Austrian art world had ever seen, a series of events that culminated in 1900 with the so-called "faculty pictures" Klimt painted for the Great Hall of Vienna University.

Klimt's Beethoven Frieze, painted for the Fourteenth Secession Exhibition in 1902, marked the beginning of a new creative period characterized by the dominance of ornamentation and the increased use of gold leaf: Klimt's "Golden Phase", which was to culminate in the painting The Kiss (1907/1908). The Kiss 1908 Portrait of Gertha Felssovanyi 1902 a r t - K l i m t . c o m

Question: Who painted Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer in 1907, sold in 2006 for $135 million?
Answer: Gustav Klimt